When it comes to CPUs, the PC Master Race is a divided bunch. Do we opt for Intel, with their superb, high-performance chips, that come with a premium price tag? Or do we sway towards AMD’s more modest offerings, that are more power efficient and affordable? While Intel chips were worth a two pair, it now looks like AMD has a full house with the AMD Ryzen.
The AMD Ryzen, from all aspects, seems to be an answer to the question, “can you have it all?” Yes, yes you can indeed. Three of the AMD Ryzen chips will be launched on the March 2 and when it comes to performance, all three have outperformed their Intel counterparts. However, that isn’t the most astonishing thing about the Ryzen chips. The price comparison between them and Intel chips are.
Intel’s premium eight-core CPU is the Intel Core i7-6900K which has a base clock of 3.4Ghz, an overclock of 3.7Ghz and a price tag of $1,089. Meanwhile, the AMD Ryzen 7 1800x has a base clock of 3.6Ghz, an overclock of 4.0Ghz and an astonishing price tag of only $499. That’s less than half the price of the i7-6900K that AMD is pitching it against.
Meanwhile, you have the Ryzen 1700X for $400, which AMD is comparing against the $450 Core i7-6800K, and the $330 Ryzen 1700 versus the $350 Core i7-7700K. All of the aforementioned Ryzen chips belong to the ‘7’ variant, which is for high performance. Much like Intel’s structuring, there will also be a mid-tier ‘5’ variant and a lower-end ‘3’ variant. However, the exact date as to when the AMD Ryzen 5 and AMD Ryzen 3 will ship is currently unknown.
Furthermore, the trio of AMD Ryzen 7 chips all features 8 cores and 16 threads, a feature that is only matched by the Haswell-E i7-5960X (~$1,100), Broadwell-E i7-6900K (~$1,100), and a few other expensive Xeon chips.
Of course, multiple independent benchmarks will have to confirm how the two competing families of chipsets do against each other, but early impressions seem to weigh heavily in favour of AMD.
